An aid group that coordinates medical care in the United States for badly injured children from Gaza has said it is “distressed” by the US state department’s decision to stop issuing visitor visas for Palestinians after a far-right influencer complained directly to the secretary of state about their work.
Laura Loomer, who has previously described herself as a “proud Islamophobe”, told the New York Times that she had spoken to Marco Rubio on Friday night to warn the secretary of state of what she called the threat posed by “Islamic invaders”.
The aid group, Heal Palestine, said in a statement that it was “an American humanitarian nonprofit organization delivering urgent aid and medical care to children in Palestine, including sponsoring and bringing severely injured children to the US on temporary visas for essential medical treatment not available at home”.
“After their treatment is complete, the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East,” the charity added, to rebut Loomer’s false claim that the visitors were part of a secret wave of “Islamic immigration”.
“This is a medical treatment program, not a refugee resettlement program,” the aid group stressed.
At least two Republican members of Congress, Chip Roy and Randy Fine, thanked Loomer on social media for bringing their attention to the medical visas for wounded children from Gaza. Roy celebrated the suspension of the visas as a first step. Fine suggested the visas had been “issued by deep state actors” and that it was necessary to now “get to the bottom of how this national security risk was allowed”.
Rubio told CBS News on Sunday that his office had stopped issuing the medical-humanitarian visas to visitors from Gaza after concerns were raised by “numerous congressional offices” about allegations that groups “bragging about and involved in acquiring these visas have strong links to terrorist groups like Hamas”.
Rubio did not cite any evidence those allegations were true, but Loomer tried to link Heal Palestine’s founder, Steve Sosebee, to Hamas on social media on Sunday by drawing attention to his effort to reopen a hospital in Gaza that Israel’s military had destroyed after alleging the Islamist militant group used it for cover.
She also criticized him for having once praised the late Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who had joked before his death about a debunked claim that an Israeli baby, killed in the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023, had been found in an oven.
The Guardian has contacted Sosebee for comment.
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Another group Sosebee founded, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, was responsible for bringing a two-year-old Palestinian girl named Rahaf, and her mother, Israa Saed, from Gaza to St Louis, Missouri, for medical treatment in December. After being fitted with prosthetic legs, Rahaf met and danced with the children’s presenter Ms Rachel.
In addition to being in frequent contact with Trump, Loomer is followed on social media by senior administration officials, including: Rubio; JD Vance, the vice-president; Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary; Kash Patel, the FBI director; and Stephen Miller, the chief domestic policy adviser.
